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Monday, March 17, 2014

Book review - The Shadow Prince, a novella by Stacey O'Neale

I received a free ARC of TheShadow Prince, which did not affect my opinion of this novella in any way.

The Shadow Prince
is a prequel novella for the author’s upcoming novel, Mortal Enchantment.

First, this isn’t the type of book I normally read, so if
there are things I don’t “get” that’s why! I do like some fantasy/paranormals, but with
a lot of grounding in our normal world. So for me, The Shadow Prince was a bit
too removed. Yes, our world exists, but doesn’t play much of a part in this
particular story. I also am not a connoisseur of faerie stories (I know, shoot
me!) and because of that, I couldn’t tell if this was truly a faerie world or
just used some fae aspects like glamour and allergy to iron. There were also
wings and hell hounds and I didn’t know if that fit. So now you know my comfort
zone wasn’t here!

But – and this is a big but – I LOVED O’Neale’s characters and
that the primary paranormal aspect was Elementals. I love the concept of
elementals, either in living, breathing form or in a source of one’s power,
which is what drew me to The Shadow
Prince in the first place. I was totally pulled in by Rowan’s character –
yep, I’d love to have him watching over me at night, or the day! He cares about
his people and those who serve the royal court, he’s strong and duh – hot!

The Shadow Prince introduces the reader to how Rowan
ultimately (I expect) becomes protector and hopefully much more to Kalin, a
young wind elemental whom others fear and want to kill. The novella left me
wanting more, fae and all, and concludes with an introduction to Mortal Enchantment, which is written
from the POV of Kalin. Given that, I thought it was a great idea to give us
more about Rowan in the prequel. And yeah, I wanted to keep reading beyond the
excerpt. Now I have to wait until May for that. Thanks a lot. Great job, Ms. O’Neale,
it took some good writing to convert me.

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About Me

I live in Oregon with my husband, cat, dog and four horses .
I train and compete endurance horses, but I have awakened a long dormant desire to put the stories in my head onto paper (or appropriately arranged electrons).